Kevin Tyrrell is Head of Markets, NYSE.
What were the key theme(s) for your business in 2024?
Last year, the NYSE focused on innovation to advance our markets for the benefit of investors and issuers alike. Most recently, we announced our plan to extend trading hours on our NYSE Arca equities exchange, pending regulatory approval, to 22 hours a day, 5 days a week. NYSE Arca ranks as the leading exchange for the listing and trading of ETFs. The NYSE’s decision to become the first exchange to drive extended hours for exchange-based trading reflects the continued growth of the U.S. as the center of the global economy.
Earlier last year, the NYSE listed the first spot Bitcoin ETF and drove the development of spot ether ETFs, following SEC approval. We also announced our collaboration with CoinDesk Indices to launch cash-settled index options tracking the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index (XBX) and sought the expansion of options trading opportunities for digital asset-related products.
These innovations will help ensure the NYSE and its markets remain the gold standard for equities trading, allowing even more global investors to access our markets with the addition of new investable assets to diversify their portfolios.
What was the highlight of 2024?
In 2023, the NYSE finished successfully migrating our second options exchange, NYSE American Options, to NYSE Pillar, one of the world’s most powerful, deterministic and resilient exchange systems. In 2024, with a full year behind us operating both of the NYSE’s options markets on Pillar, we have been able to see the benefits of Pillar. For example, median latency on NYSE American Options dropped by two-thirds, and as latency decreased, we saw an increase in daily message traffic across both options exchanges, more than doubling pre-Pillar levels. We are proud of the results we’ve seen thus far and look forward to continuing to enhance our cutting-edge technology.
We also improved transparency and price discovery in the NYSE Closing Auction, expanding the data included in our imbalance feed and publishing more actionable messages. NYSE Closing Auction volume continues to grow, setting new total volume and total dollar volume records in 2024.
What are your expectations for 2025?
With major market indices reaching new all-time highs in late 2024, there is a sense of optimism among market participants going into 2025. During this past year, we experienced the re-opening of the IPO market, the immense growth of both the options market and ETF industry, and the approval of Bitcoin-related products. We expect many of these trends to continue in the new year. In addition, as we move forward and implement extended hours equities trading on NYSE Arca, we expect interest and volume in after-hours trading to continue to increase.
